The present invention relates to a gear mechanism, and specifically, relates to a steering gear mechanism which has structure for compensating for wear of meshing gear teeth.
Meshing gear teeth are subject to wear. To maintain tight meshing engagement between gears, gear mechanisms have been provided with wear compensating structures. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 1,869,576 discloses a wear compensating structure for a steering gear. The steering gear in U.S. Pat. No. 1,869,576 includes a worm gear and a sector gear in meshing engagement. The sector gear is biased into meshing engagement with the worm gear by a spring. Clearance is provided between the shaft supporting the sector gear and bearings to enable the shaft supporting the sector gear to move due to the spring bias. The spring automatically maintains the gear teeth in tight meshing engagement even though the gear teeth wear. The spring is a coil spring and functions only for wear compensation.
Known steering mechanisms have also included structure for manual adjustment of the gears to compensate for gear tooth wear. Because of the additional parts required to accomplish the wear compensation, these mechanisms are relatively complex and difficult to assemble.